Rashtiyan Mododo
'Rashtiyan Swaravek Mododo '(1907 - 1981) was the fourteenth President of Tara from 1954 to 1973 and again from 1976 to 1981. A member of the center-left federalist Ladenge party that had long dominated Tarati politics, Mododo was the first Tribal Tarati president and the second of non-Tarthan origin. A political figure of many contradictions, he was a champion of democracy, federalism, multiculturalism, internationalism, and democratic socialist policies while also criticized for his authoritarian tendencies. Mododo was born to a mixed Beté and Nagay family in Sihil before obtaining a B.A. in history from Fern Grove University in Sednyana and a law degree from Tyanah University. He joined politics around the time of the Ladenge Party's collapse, and became an activist against Yayute and Kassa, defending federalism and the rights of minorities. He joined the ''Ladenge Noto ''wing of the collapsed party and quickly became Governor of Nagay, and then ascending to the presidency in a close election in 1954, defeating the incumbent nationalist Harayare Kassa (Ladenge Funeswar) on a populist message that promised a pairing of social justice with state autonomy and rights to language and religion. In his first term as president, Mododo achieved many of his goals, increasing national stability, redistributing wealth, breaking up major banks, enacting land reform, and preserving a balance between the minority states and the center. In 1958, he won the election with an overwhelming 74% of the vote. Controversially, he made an explicit alliance with the Tarati far left, bringing radical socialist groups in the west into the government and moderating them. His leftist leanings made many traditional conservatives and business elite turn away from him, but his popular base, particularly in the west, remained overwhelming; in his home state of Nagay, he won 88% of the vote in 1962. Unusually, even while he restricted the reach of the central government, he strengthened his own power, and largely purged Ladenge Noto (often now rebranded as simply "Ladenge," as Ladenge Funeswar and Ladenge Kupo had been effectively destroyed) of any political opposition. Even as he embraced some socialists, those he did not he labeled terrorists. In one extreme case, in 1963, he turned the mainstream Tarati branch of the Maztlánaria - the Tarati-Maztlanas - against the more extremist branch organization Hadun (which advocated the abolition of the Tarati state), supporting the Tarati-Maztlanas with arms and money as they killed over a thousand members of Hadun, mostly in Tenge Narvang and Siowak. Despite some of the president's unconventional tendences, Tara under Mododo experienced a stability and cultural flourishing in the 1960s that it never had before, over understood in parallel with Sednyana's Cultural Revolution. This was perhaps best exemplified by Mododo's idolization by the Astyi movement, and the friendship between Mododo and Leo Zaris. The late 1960s saw a turn against some of Mododo's policies, however, with the formation of the Tarthaswarek Tang, a powerful right-wing Tarati nationalist organization that had existed since the 1930s but now came to be supported by many among the eastern business elite who resented Mododo's populist and socialist policies. Claiming that Mododo had taken over the government, the TST began to engage in political violence as early as 1969, advocating a powerful reshaping of the state. Its leader, Anutun Thiuren, made some explicitly anti-democratic overtures, and implied that perhaps the Tartha majority in the east should be given a greater say than the "barbaric" western people , particularly his repressing of the ''Tarthaswarek Tang, ''the right-wing Tarthan nationalist party who won elections in 1971. Under claims that the TST had committed election fraud and participated in election violence (which was most likely true, although perhaps also true of Ladenge), Mododo controversially canceled the results of the 1971 election and banned the TST, his major opposition party, which led to the creation of a parallel TST government that was subsequently crushed by Mododo; many TST leaders were arrested and several were killed under allegations of treason. Mododo held new elections in 1972, nominally not running out of claims of fairness, although his Prime Minister Hartyammu Ktasiyari won in a landslide. Mododo would return to the political scene after Ktasiyari resigned in a corruption scandal three years later, after which he served as president again for four years until his assassination in 1981 by a Tarthan nationalist. Legacy Mododo is often regarded as Tara's most important president, and as a seminal figure in the twentieth-century history of the Southern Continent. Even as some of his policies - particularly his antidemocratic tendencies - have received condemnation, his image and rhetoric have had a profound impact on Tara and the Southern Continent.